On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Friday, November 15, 2002
The Georgia Straight has re-published Martin Dunphy's scathing "Kill the Careers of the Bus-Strike Politicians," which first ran in July 2001, as the city's bus strike entered its fourth month. The strike left tens of thousands of Vancouverites (and hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Lower Mainland) without their main mode of transportation for 112 days. Within a few weeks of the strike's beginning, special mediator Vince Ready, one of Canada's top labour mediators, had issued a report that, if accepted by both parties, would have ended the strike. The Canadian Auto Workers accepted the recommenations; TransLink, the transportation authority, refused to do so. Three Vancouver city councillors were on the TransLink board at the time. One, Gordon Price, has decided not to seek a fourth term. The others are running in this election: NPA mayoral candidate Jennifer Clarke, and NPA city councillor George Puil.
It was an angry, vitriolic rant, fuelled by anger at a city council who, with the exception of COPE councillors Fred Bass and Tim Louis, did little other than twiddle their thumbs and mouth platitudes during the strike.
Okay, that's not fair. The NPA-dominated council did take some initiative to deal with the strike, and the protests of angry bus riders. They held council meetings at 8 a.m., hoping that the riff-raff wouldn't show up at such an early hour. They also barred any "suspicious-looking" members of the public from attending city council meetings; City Hall security even tried to keep the late Harry Rankin away from one council meeting. Harry Rankin! A guy who served on council for 25 years, barred from attending a supposedly public meeting of Vancouver city council!
However, they never once addressed the labour dispute. They claimed that the city "couldn't legally do anything." Not once did they call on TransLink to get back to the bargaining table, or to agree to the mediator's report, a report that was eventually legislated on the parties by the provincial government.
Dunphy urges Vancouver voters to give those politicians, Puil and Clarke, a kick in the ass... right out the door.
I'm inclined to agree.
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